Year after year, students returned to Truett Elementary School just as it was left the year before.

Bathrooms reeked of human waste where urine had rotted the floors. The carpet was covered with rainwater stains from the leaky roof. Faulty pipes had duct-tape patches. Some of the 36 portable classrooms had holes clean through the siding.

With more than 1,100 students in a school built for 650, lunch was served from morning to midafternoon. Neighbors said that when tornadoes tore through Dallas in April, the children were crammed into the hallways, with some cowering under gym mats near the windows.

Each year, a new class of kindergartners was introduced to school in that environment. Over the last decade, while Dallas ISD spent billions to build new schools and renovate others, Truett was largely ignored, left to deteriorate as even more children enrolled.

When school starts Monday, however, Truett students will return to find working bathrooms, classrooms with air conditioning and shiny windows — thanks to a chance meeting last spring between a Dallas school board candidate and a teacher assistant.

During his campaign, Dan Micciche was greeting voters near White Rock Lake when he knocked at the door of a teacher assistant. She delivered an urgent plea: Please fix the deplorable conditions at Truett Elementary.

After Micciche won the election, he visited the school and was outraged, unable to comprehend how a school could be allowed to fall into such disrepair. “I couldn’t think of anything else or sleep at night knowing that I absolutely had to get it cleaned up,” he said.

When he sought answers, he discovered everyone at the school was new. “As angry as I was when I discovered the conditions, there was no one to be angry at,” Micciche said.

Most of the people who could be held accountable were gone. District trustees, administrators and principals routinely handed off responsibility for the school, which sits in a part of Dallas where residents can’t or don’t know how to advocate for their children.

Truett draws students from a neighborhood of modest one-story homes that popped up after World War II. Years later, large apartment complexes began to line nearby Buckner Boulevard and Peavy Road. Some are now slums, with crime, drugs and gangs, where impoverished families move from apartment to apartment, chasing offers for free first-month rent.

The school in Far East Dallas also draws students from immigrant families who had fled ethnic violence in other parts of the world and were already raising their children in dire conditions.

Few residents vote.

“How did this happen? Truett got totally left behind,” said Ellen Childress, a neighbor who tried to sound the alarm for years. “These parents and children are under the radar. They have lives that are so overwhelming to them that they don’t have time to fight DISD.”

A principal who tried

In the past decade, some Truett principals and trustees raised concerns, asked for help and got some promises, but there never seemed to be a collective will in the district to give Truett any serious attention or money.

Daniel Menchaca was a principal who tried.

In 2007, Menchaca moved from E.D. Walker Middle School, a North Dallas campus that received almost anything it wanted, to Truett, a school in desperate need of help.

“If you have a crumbling building and bad airflow to breathe and restrooms too filthy to send anyone in and nowhere to sit down for lunch, it’s demoralizing,” Menchaca said. “I decided to raise hell.”

Menchaca said he repeatedly asked district maintenance crews to fix problems, but, he said, they would do a temporary fix or promise that the work would be included in a future bond program. He tried to rally the community but failed. He said Superintendent Michael Hinojosa visited in 2007-08 but left before Menchaca could give him a tour.

After complaining for two years about Truett’s conditions, Menchaca was demoted to an assistant principal position. He then resigned after 19 years with the district. His supervisor, Lisa Deveaux, who has since left the district, couldn’t be reached for comment.

“Why was this building left like this for so long?” Menchaca said. “I came to the conclusion that you have all these young principals before me who didn’t want to make waves. The community was apolitical. That’s why it lingered on.”

Tiffany Nemec, the principal who followed Menchaca, couldn’t be reached for comment. Her successor, Megan Barringer, who was principal until May, promised to return a call seeking an interview but didn’t follow through.

Three trustees

In 2008, voters approved a $1.35 billion bond package that promised 14 new schools and upgrades and renovations at all 225 DISD campuses.

Former trustee Ron Price, whose district included Truett from 2003 to 2009, said he easily got support for new classrooms at Woodrow Wilson High School, a new wing at W.A. Blair Elementary School and a new O.M. Roberts Elementary School.

But, Price said, the district denied his proposal for a 20-classroom wing for Truett. “They said they couldn’t fit it in the bond program,” he said.

In the end, Truett was earmarked for little — $3.8 million for a larger cafeteria, new paint and other touchups.

Price said DISD’s bond department promised to spend what would be left at the end of the 2008 bond program on a new wing at Truett. “But everyone who had that gentleman agreement is gone,” he said.

Trustee Bernadette Nutall was elected to the District 9 seat in 2009 after Price chose not to run again. She met with Ellen Childress and other concerned neighbors, and said she asked Phil Jimerson, DISD’s construction services executive director, to put more money into Truett. The request was denied. Jimerson, who now works in Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, didn’t return a call seeking comment.

“Truett got left behind,” Nutall said.

In 2011, trustee Bruce Parrott took over Truett when the district boundaries were adjusted. He said he didn’t realize the severity of Truett’s problems until a few weeks before he lost the school board election to Micciche in May.

“From what I saw, it was completely unacceptable,” he said. “It was a health hazard.”

School bond selection

Dallas ISD has had two billion-dollar bond packages — one in 2002 and another in 2008. The district’s bond office surveyed every school before each bond proposal to determine what schools needed. Those lists were given to the Future Facilities Task Force, made up of district employees and residents, to help determine what issues the bonds should tackle.

Craig Reynolds, a Dallas architect who has led that task force since 1996, said that for the 2008 program, the district initially presented $2.65 billion worth of new schools, improvements and upgrades to fix essentially every problem.

Assuming voters wouldn’t approve such an expensive deal, the task force cut the proposal in half. Reynolds said he couldn’t recall whether the original proposal included more substantial projects for Truett. “If Truett was lightly touched in the 2002 program, then it should have been thoroughly addressed in the 2008 program,” he said.

Reynolds said that he made sure politics played no role on the committee in selecting which schools and areas would be targeted for upgrades.

Vicki Martin, president of the Ferguson Road Initiative, said that community advocacy has helped some schools get upgrades. It ensured Bayles Elementary School — two miles from Truett — received more classrooms in the 2002 bond program, Martin said.

She said community members promised DISD administrators that residents near Bayles would vote for the bond package if the school got a new wing. “It was one of the first schools to get an addition after the bond was passed,” she said.

Ed Levine, DISD’s current construction services executive director, said the district has already compiled a list of possible upgrades and renovations for a future bond program. The idea of a new wing of classrooms at Truett has been discussed, as has the possibly of building a new school to relieve overcrowding.

“We are exploring what might need to be done. We aren’t there yet,” Levine said. “There are many ways I think the district could go to resolve the issue.”

Makeover

In the meantime, Truett is receiving a makeover.

Construction crews have worked feverishly to complete numerous upgrades and fixes to Truett before the start of school Monday. The work began a few months ago — only after Micciche alerted top administrators to the magnitude of the school’s problems.

He and Parrott met with community members in May, and then with Levine and Alan King, DISD’s chief of staff. Community members credit Micciche and King for expediting bond construction, such as new paint in hallways and classrooms, which was scheduled for next year.

The school’s new principal, Jonathan Smith, said he didn’t know about Truett’s problems when he accepted the position after leading Edna Rowe Elementary School in Pleasant Grove. “I don’t know how it got this way,” he said. “But I can tell you that we are going to fix it.”

Two weeks before school, a woman was cleaning windows, crews were removing old computer equipment and floors were being buffed. Whiteboards replaced old chalkboards. A flatbed trailer with a chiller pumped cool air throughout the school.

Crews removed 10 portable buildings after Smith combined offices and removed storage from classrooms to be able to bring students into the main building. The gymnasium is still too small for the school’s 1,100 students, but the floor shines.

Debbie Harroff, a DISD student diagnostician, walked through the school a couple weeks ago and marveled at the transformation. She stopped Smith in the hallway. “Unbelievable,” she told him. “Out of all the years I’ve been here, I cannot believe it.”

Smith flashed a wide smile.

“How did you manage this?” she asked him.

“Hey, we worked hard,” Smith replied. “We made it happen.”

‘Clean Restroom Initiative’

After Dallas ISD trustee Dan Micciche saw the appalling conditions at Truett Elementary School, he wanted to make sure no other schoolchildren had to use such filthy restrooms. He is urging district administrators to adopt a “Clean Restroom Initiative,” which includes ensuring that:

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